Grahamstown has suffered yet another string of water outages caused by burst pipes, broken pipes and poor management of reservoirs, leaving thousands of residents inconvenienced and at least one person dead.
Grahamstown has suffered yet another string of water outages caused by burst pipes, broken pipes and poor management of reservoirs, leaving thousands of residents inconvenienced and at least one person dead.
Grocott's Mail reported on the death of a 34-year-old man (Grocott's Mail Tuesday 12 March 2013, "Water tragedy").
The man, who lived in Hlalani location collapsed on his way home from fetching water at municipal fire trucks dispensing water in another area.
Western areas of the city which have been without water are Westhill, Classenbury and Somerset Heights – all served by the Waainek Treatment Works.
Municipal spokesman Mncedisi Boma told Grocott's Mail this week that the cause of water outages in these areas was lack of monitoring of the lower reservoir.
"Since yesterday [Tuesday] the low reservoir was not monitored. It is supposed to be monitored throughout the night," said Boma.
By Wednesday morning, thousands of residents did not have water. "The reservoir was empty. We had to close it so that the levels could go up," Boma said.
On Thursday the water supply to those areas was restored.
Outages that left Grahamstown East residents without water for the whole weekend, however, were thanks to a contractor who damaged a major water pipe during excavations.
Director for Technical Services and Infrastructure Thembinkosi Myalato told Grocott's Mail that a mistake by contractors installing a new pipe from the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works had left about 40 000 residents without water.
"The water outage on the weekend was caused by damage to our existing water pipe at James Kleynhans Water Treatment Work," Myalato said.
"The contractor who is busy installing the new pipe at that site was digging and they damaged the old pipe. The water had to be stopped because the pipe had a big hole after the damage," said Myalato.
"We went to Radio Grahamstown to make the community aware of the water outage – but the contractors could not fix the pipe at night because it was dark," he said.
The cast iron pipe carries water from the treatment works to the Botha's Hill reservoir. This, in turn, feeds the two intermediate reservoirs in Tantyi and Mayfield, which service Grahamstown East.
Myalato said the municipality would charge the contractor for the damage, as well as overtime for municipal workers sent to fix it.
"The repairs to the pipe were done by 12.30pm on Saturday, but the intermediate reservoirs [Tantyi and Mayfield] and Botha's Hill were empty," he said.
Port Elizabeth company WK Construction was appointed by Makana for the James Kleynhans project.
Myalato said strong winds on the day had made matters worse, making it made it difficult for the workers to open the valves to fill the pipes with water.
"[This] caused a delay in filling the pipes – our workers had to do it manually," he said.
"This manual way takes about six hours, as they had to go and open all the scour valves," Myalato said.
